A Companion to the History of the Book (41 page)

Religion

Religion was an inescapable feature of daily life in early-modern Europe, and the new publishing industry inevitably derived considerable profit from supplying its varied needs. At first, this meant exclusively the needs of the Catholic Church: specialist texts for theologians and canon lawyers, practical manuals for parish clergy for preaching sermons or hearing confessions, service books for monasteries, cathedrals, and parish churches, Books of Hours for lay devotions, and reading matter in the vernacular languages too, not to mention Latin Bibles. In the 1520s, for example, Latin Bibles were published in Antwerp, Basel, Cologne, Lyon, Nuremberg, Paris, and Strasburg. The advent of the Reformation in its various European manifestations inevitably altered the pattern of religious published materials and enormously increased its volume.

It is much disputed whether the Reformation could have happened without the power of the printing press to distribute its message. Its development would certainly have been different. Martin Luther (1483?–1546) initiated the German Reformation with his protest against the sale of indulgences (at Wittenberg, 1517). The controversies which followed were characterized by floods of pamphlets from all sides of the dispute, many written by Luther himself (two dozen in 1520 alone). In France in the 1520s, the group known as the
évangéliques,
influenced partly by Luther and partly by the work of Erasmus, had their own publishing program, supported by elements at court with intermittent periods of repression, such as the ineffective decree by King François I to ban printing in his kingdom (January 1535) following a spate of anti-sacramentarian pamphlets (the
affaire des placards).
The decree had no noticeable effect on the volume of printed materials recorded for that year.

One of the reformers’ goals was to give a better scholarly understanding of the texts of the Bible through study of their Hebrew and Greek originals and to provide direct access to the Bible for the laity. Erasmus’s edition of the Greek New Testament first appeared in 1519; his Latin paraphrases of the Greek New Testament (1517 and later) were frequently reprinted. Luther’s translation of the Bible into German (New Testament 1522, complete Bible 1534) was the first of a series of new vernacular translations: Dutch (1526), French (1530), Italian (1530), English (1535), Spanish (New Testament 1543), Polish (1561), all opposed officially by the Catholic Church.

If Luther’s Reformation was essentially German-speaking, the other main Protestant group, led by Jean Calvin (1509–64), was French-speaking, though based in Geneva, just outside the territory of the French crown and therefore beyond the reach of French ecclesiastical authority. The first edition of Calvin’s
Institution of the Christian Religion
was printed in Latin in Basel in 1536, with a dedication to the king of France. By the time of Calvin’s death, there had been ten editions of the work in Latin, seventeen in French, as well as editions in English, Italian, and Dutch. Calvin’s Geneva was a publishing phenomenon: from being an unimportant printing town in the 1530s, it became the center of a propaganda industry by the 1550s. Robert Estienne transferred his business there from Paris in 1551, as had Josse Badius’s son Conrad in 1549. Another important printer established in Geneva was Jean Crespin (c.1520–72), who printed much material for the Calvinist Church as well as educational and classical texts. His great personal contribution to the Calvinist Reformation was his
Book of Martyrs,
which graphically documented their sufferings at the hands of the Catholic authorities. First published in 1554, it was constantly revised and augmented and went through fifteen editions in twenty years. The presence of English Protestant exiles in Geneva during the reign of Queen Mary led Crespin to a collaboration with John Foxe (1517–87), whose own
Book of Martyrs
(1563), frequently reprinted, played a similar role in the documentation of the English Reformation and was regularly found among the books in English churches. Another important Calvinist bestseller was the metrical psalms composed by the French royal poet Clément Marot (1496–1544) and often published with copies of the French Calvinist Bible. The English equivalent was the metrical Psalter of Sternhold and Hopkins, first published in 1549 and remaining in use until the nineteenth century.

The Council of Trent (1545–63) was originally intended to address some of the abuses which the Lutherans had protested about, but soon embarked on a wholesale restatement of Catholic doctrine and liturgy to mark out the ground against the reformers. The three sets of sessions of the Council generated a whole literature of position statements, distributed all over Europe. The new liturgies required the abandonment of old service books and the printing of large quantities of new missals, breviaries, Books of Hours, and so on. Some printers exploited these opportunities very successfully. Christophe Plantin who, in spite of his own apparently unorthodox religious beliefs, held privileges from the Spanish crown for the production of the new liturgies in Spanish territories, including the Low Countries and the New World, was less successful, as his royal Spanish patron was not a good payer of bills.

Another aspect of the Counter-Reformation that had an impact on the market for books was the founding of new religious orders, especially ones with an educational mission. The Jesuit order established colleges all over Europe which attracted the sons of the nobility and gentry. Their educational reforms created an opportunity for whole series of new textbooks and further stimulated the demand for editions of the classical authors who provided the staple reading of the Jesuit schools.

A further characteristic of religious practice at the time was the attempt to control what could be safely read by the populace and to suppress what could not. In the Catholic world, the major development here was the creation of a series of Indexes of Prohibited Books
(Index librorum prohibitorum)
, the printing of which provided further useful employment for printers. Books surviving from libraries of the period often show the marks of censorship as college or monastic authorities tried to expurgate texts which were otherwise thought to be worth studying.

The religious turmoil of the second half of the century stimulated a flood of printed propaganda. The French Wars of Religion (1562–98) generated an immense volume of pamphlets from all sides as the focus of the conflict shifted between Catholic and Protestant, crown and aristocracy, Spain and France. In England, Calvinist literature was smuggled in from Geneva or the Low Countries in Mary’s reign; in Elizabeth’s, heterodox works had to be imported or produced clandestinely by the Protestant Mar-prelate press (1588–9) or the Catholic English secret presses (1587 onward).

England’s own Reformation also had a role for printed books. Henry VIII and Bishop John Fisher published anti-Lutheran tracts in the early 1520s, but by the mid-1530s the beginnings of the English Reformation saw the publication of English-language versions of tracts by German reformers. The history of the English Bible and the English prayer-book is well known, but the statistics of publication are worth stressing: the
Short-title Catalogue of Books Printed in England, Scotland and Ireland (1475–1640)
lists twelve editions of the Book of Common Prayer printed in 1549, the first year of publication; fifty years later, four or five editions a year were still being produced. The continuous availability of the Bible in English is similarly impressive: there were seven editions of the Great Bible in 1539 and 1540; in the 1590s, there were twenty-two editions of the Geneva Bible and two of the Bishops’ Bible. The existence of the Church of England as an English-language state church ensured a continuous demand for Bibles, prayer-books, and expository materials, including controversial works published abroad by its Puritan and Catholic opponents.

The book trade also attempted to meet the needs of other religious communities beyond the main areas of Catholic, Lutheran, and Calvinist Europe. In particular, the liturgical needs of the Orthodox Churches, both Greek and Russian, started to appear in print, necessitating the preparation of special Greek and Cyrillic founts. For a long time, Venice remained the center for the printing of Orthodox liturgical books, mainly in Greek but also in Slavonic. The first Cyrillic liturgical text was a Book of Hours, printed in Moscow in 1565, the second dated book produced in Russia, the first being an edition of
The Acts of the Apostles
printed in 1564. Jewish religious texts in Hebrew were also produced, especially in Italy and in Eastern Europe.

Regulation

Although the civil and ecclesiastical authorities felt the need to keep an eye on the activities of printers, booksellers, and even purchasers of books, members of the book trade often looked to the same authorities for support and protection in their activities. In Paris, members of the book trade fell under the general jurisdiction of the university, which appointed twenty-four
libraires jurés
(sworn booksellers) as their intermediaries in administering oversight of the trade. In addition to the status that this gave, the
libraires jurés
had exemptions from taxes as members of the university. Authors and producers in France enjoyed protection for their wares through
privilèges
issued by the state authorities: a new work could be protected from reprinting by the award of a privilege for a limited number of years. The award was made by a court: the royal court, or, in Paris, the Parlement or the Prévôt, or one of the provincial
parlements.
Infringement of the privilege could be pursued through the courts, but the privileges sometimes stated the maximum price which could be charged for the book. Privileges were first issued by the Senate in Venice and were also found elsewhere in Italy and in Germany; they represented a step in the development of the concept of copyright.

In England the system was somewhat different. The Stationers’ Company under its royal charter of 1557 was empowered to regulate the book trade (essentially in London) on behalf of its members and of the civil authorities. The Company kept a register in which its members could pay to have their new publications recorded. This gave them protection against reprinting, with the Company as the body that was empowered to enforce seizures and fines for infringements.

State and religious authorities in a number of countries had a system whereby new books had to be “licensed” before publication to ensure their religious conformity. The role of the
Index
in Catholic countries has already been mentioned. The other authority that came to concern itself with book censorship was the Inquisition, especially in Spanish territories.

Geography: The Continued Spread of Printing Centers

By the beginning of the sixteenth century, printers had established themselves in all the major cities of Europe, with Paris, Venice, and Lyon as the three main publishing centers. Paris was a university and administrative centre; Venice was the hub of an extensive trading empire; and Lyon had one of the most important European trade fairs, held four times a year, where merchants could arrange deals and settle accounts. By the end of the century, Venice had declined; the Lyon fairs had become less important; Antwerp had become more significant as a trading center; and the German fairs at Frankfurt and at Leipzig achieved a predominant role in the European book-supply system.

In all the major towns of Europe which had a university or college or a significant legal or administrative center, the printing industry had probably already been active since the fifteenth century. Cities such as Strasburg or Basel continued to have a significant presence in the book trade well into the sixteenth century. In the smaller centers, a printer may have done little book printing but would have had work producing material for local needs: pamphlets, administrative documents, and so on, and would also have functioned as a bookseller, a bookbinder, and often as a more general merchant. As the century progressed, this pattern of diversification into smaller urban centers continued, stimulated by young men looking for new opportunities to establish themselves in the trade and civic pride on the part of municipalities eager to support a modernizing initiative. In France, Toulouse continued to have a significant publishing industry throughout the century, supported by a university and the regional
parlement.
Bordeaux likewise had a succession of booksellers who occasionally published titles themselves, even if only edicts of the
parlement
or books for the local college; later in the century, Simon de Millanges established a successful printing business (1572–1623) which served the needs of the Collège de Guyenne and the new Jesuit college. On the other hand, only a handful of imprints are recorded for a small town like Saumur, and most of these are Wars of Religion pamphlets from around 1590. In Italy and Germany, the existence of many smaller, independent cities and principalities led to a good spread of regional printing and publishing businesses. The index to the British Library’s
Short-title Catalogue of Books Printed in Germany up to 1600
shows 150 German and Austrian towns with printing or publishing activities. For Italy, the figure is 130 towns.

The situation in England was slightly different. Although spasmodic attempts to establish presses are recorded for provincial towns (York, 1506–19; Canterbury, 1533–56; Ipswich, 1548; Worcester, 1549–53), printing was essentially concentrated in the capital, with some other activity in the two university cities of Oxford and Cambridge. This situation was formalized with the establishment of the Stationers’ Company when printing and publishing essentially became a monopoly of the Company and its members.

Many towns which did not yet have a printer would nevertheless have a bookshop, especially if there was a college or other local market to be supplied. Although literacy in the early-modern period was predominantly an urban phenomenon, chapmen carried small texts into the country districts, and even shepherds are recorded as making determined efforts to learn to read, particularly if they had religious interests.